family and childhood

My reactions relate not only to the reading "All Souls" but to other reviews of the work. I should state with clarity that I am familiar neither with the individuals in the book nor with the history of Southie. Yet MacDonald's book is vital to both the story of urban centers such as Boston but also to the untold story of white poverty in the United States. Books such as "All Souls" and more militant pieces such as "The Redneck Manifesto" (Jim Goad's brash and irreverent book) are important accounts of white poverty. MacDonald never portrayed his work as "a socio-cultural study of white poverty in an Urban Center in the Northeastern United States," but a personal account of his family's experiences. "All Souls" presents a good picture of the complexities of the real world - a family that was a picture of both dysfunction and resiliency, a community "code" that served both as its' strength and its' Achilles heal, and a person who journeyed through life trying to come to terms with these issues.

Unaware of the accuracy of the "facts," the story of this family is an important addition to those who continually ignore the reality of the "white experience in America" - an experience, that for many, is not couched in race-based advantage. To dismiss an important piece of work such as this based on interpretation of facts or untold pieces of what is an enormously complex story misses the point. Mr. MacDonald, good job on starting an important discussion!

This piece of literature has it all: it's moving, riveting, gripping, and revealing; and it's very well written. The author's clearly a talented story teller, and he's very courageous to put this revealing story of his family's tragic experiences in the public domain. Michael MacDonald(and Ma) should be commended just for that courage, not even considering his literary talents. I can't imagine the level of pain he endured writing it because of the pain I felt just reading it. The book's emotional spectrum runs the whole gamut from sadness, grief, and despair to sheer hilartity...there's that Irish wit and humor throughout.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone and everyone in our American society. The story had to be told: it's poverty and class, folks, not race! Whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc., whatever ethnic or racial group there is, those at the poor end of the specrum will suffer until society changes."All Souls" teaches us that. Hopefully we'll learn from this marvelous work, and things will improve.

Like Michael, I'm someone born and brought up in a Southie housing project(The Old Harbor Village), albeit some 25 years earlier. I was luckier than Michael and his siblings because I had two parents, and drugs and guns were virtually nonexistent in Southie's projects in the 40's, 50's, and early 60's when I was there. However, I can identify with and testify to the existence of "Southie Pride", and the insular nature of "The Town", that "us versus the rest of the world" mentality. Combine that with the forced busing saga produced by a self-serving state legislature which passed laws to insure their lily-white towns wouldn't be affected by busing, and a judge from Wellesley who didn't have a clue, along with extreme poverty, organized crime controlling Southie ,an incompetent and/or corrupt police force, a similarly corrupt local FBI contingent, guns, drugs, and booze pouring in uninhibited by law enforcement, and lo and behold, you have the perfect formula for the disaster that ensued, the anger, hate, despair, misery, grief, the premature deaths, suicides, murders, ODs' etc, the exacerbation of Southie's natural introversion! Thanks to this wonderful book, the story is out there,and the healing process has begun.

I really hope all of America reads the book, especially those non-Southies who live in Boston and its environs. I guarantee you will all change your perspective of Southie afterwards. I would also recommend that "All Souls" be mandatory in the high school English courses of the Boston Public School system, as well as those across the country. There'a a major lesson to be learned here.

Michael MacDonald..Thank you for your story, and I'll be waiting for to write more!

Before the gentrification of Southie and Dot, these areas contained Boston's infamous white "underclass." This book is the story of a fascinating family that lived in Southie in the 70's and 80's, and witnessed and participated in some of the most important events to happen in Boston in the 20th century.

The book is really divided into two parts. The first part takes place when the author was a very young child, and is primarily about his older siblings. It is the 70's, when the bussing riots are threatening to destroy Boston and the Winter Hill gang was hanging around in a certain auto body shop. The author makes it clear that a lot of what he tells about these events is second hand, primarily from his siblings and his mother. However, since they were very active in so many events, and since this book concentrates on the whole family and not just the author, this does not detract from the veracity of the book at all. The second part takes place in the 1980's, when, in the aftermath of the Charles Stewart fiasco, the police are looking for a martyr to prove that they're not rascist. They settle on the author's younger brother.

The most fascinating thing about this book his how the author manages to chronicle how a family and a community can disintigrate while remaining as strong as ever. Not everyone in the family, or the community makes it through the book, and as Southie is quickly becoming hot real estate it is sad to think of the community that is being condo'd over.

Anyone who is interested in knowing why Boston is the way it is now should read this book. Boston is still living with the repurcussions of the period that this book covers, and this book offers a fascinating first (and sometimes second) hand account of the events that shaped our city.